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Police investigate double homicide in Thunderbolt

Dash Coleman/Savannah Morning News

This home at 3134 Robertson Ave. in Thunderbolt was the scene of a double homicide late Sunday night. Police arrived to find two people shot outside in the carport area, said Thunderbolt Public Safety Director Robert Merriman.

Investigators are sorting out the details of a late-night Sunday shooting in Thunderbolt that left two people dead.

Police responded to 3134 Robertson Ave. after neighbors called 911 about 11:45 p.m. Sunday to report a shooting, said Thunderbolt Public Safety Director Robert Merriman, who oversees the town’s police and fire departments.

Officers arrived at the normally quiet street that runs off Falligant Avenue near Tara at Thunderbolt Nursing and Rehabilitation Center to find two people shot in the carport area outside the one-story house.

A man was pronounced dead at the scene, and a woman died while being transported to Memorial University Medical Center, Merriman said.

Police were withholding the victims’ identification on Monday pending full notification of next of kin.

Sunday’s deaths are the first homicide cases in Thunderbolt since 2011, and the second and third such incidents since 2001, according to archived stories in the Savannah Morning News.

Residents in the area said violent crime is rare nearby.

“I’ve heard random gunshots or people shooting fireworks — you don’t know exactly what it could be — but I don’t remember anyone ever getting shot,” said Cyn Peterson, who has lived at the corner of Falligant and Robertson for 25 years.

On Sunday night, however, she heard several shots being fired from a few houses away just as she was about to go to bed.

“I heard some gunshots — it felt like there were three or four — then a few minutes later, I heard another three or four. That’s what it felt like,” she said.

Police vehicles were soon lining Falligant and Robertson as investigators worked into the morning, she said.

Though the two people killed lived only a few houses away, Peterson, like a few others in the neighborhood said Monday, had very little contact with them.

“I didn’t really know them,” she said. “They were on a different schedule. I would see her every once in a while getting stuff out of her car. ... I didn’t see him at all.”

Police on Monday afternoon did not yet have a description of suspects to release or a possible motive for the crime. The Savannah-Chatham police department’s forensics unit is helping Thunderbolt police with the investigation.

Merriman, before being hired as Thunderbolt’s public safety director in June, spent more than 30 years as a violent crimes investigator for the Savannah and later metro police departments. He retired from metro in 2007 as commander of its violent crimes unit.

“My experience is that we take one case at a time and we go through all the various exercises and make sure that we dot the I’s and cross the T’s and leave nothing unturned,” he said.

Though police were done processing the crime scene on Robertson Avenue on Monday afternoon, Merriman stressed the investigation is in its early stages.

“Right now (we are) notifying all the family members, getting the cause of death and working on the suspect,” he said.

Anyone with information on the homicides is asked to call Thunderbolt police at 912-354-3838 or CrimeStoppers at 912-234-2020. Tipsters to CrimeStoppers remain anonymous and may qualify for a cash reward.